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In May, we welcomed two work experience students, Kayanath and Holly, to Chawton House.

While with us, they created artwork for some of our onsite signage, helped us spruce up our Tearoom, created a new Garden trail for families, helped set up for our Bank Holiday book fair, and picked out some recipes from historic manuscript recipe books as part of our Create with Us programme, connected to our current exhibition. In this post, they write about their favourite objects in the collection, and about their experience at Chawton House more broadly.

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Knight family cookbook

The cookbook in particular we found quite interesting as some of the recipes listed inside were quite bizarre (for example, snail milk and pickled pigeon). The cookbook consisted of recipes written by the Knight family and their household cooks.

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Mary Robinson

As we were walking around the house, we saw a portrait of an actress called Mary Robinson. At first, we were drawn to it because of her striking features but we soon came to learn she was much more than just a stunning face. Mary wrote many books and poems; one of her most notable novels was her first, Vancenza; or, The Dangers of Credulity (1792), a gothic style story about seduction. Alongside her endeavours with novels and poetry, Mary Robinson wrote in favour of women’s rights and education.

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Fire extinguisher

When we came across the fire extinguisher, we were intrigued by its peculiar shape, as well as that on the front, it said you had to ‘drive in the knob by a hard blow against the floor’ which contrasts greatly to how we use fire extinguishers today!

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Our experience

Our experience at Chawton House has been very fascinating. Being surrounded by so much history and culture has been surreal to say the least, from working in the tearoom to designing boards and helping with the marquee, we got to experience first-hand what it’s like to work behind the scenes of such a historically rich place. This week has really given us a clear insight into how much teamwork and creativity goes into running a place like this and has taught us things we most likely won’t ever forget. Something we definitely won’t forget was how incredibly kind, warm and welcoming the women we worked with were, we felt so comfortable and included throughout the week which made the experience even more enjoyable for us.  We also thought it was so interesting how all the tour guides were volunteers – their passion about the history behind this place and their enthusiasm when giving tours really opened our eyes o how much the community care about preserving Chawton House and its stories. This truly was an experience we will never forget.
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It was a pleasure having Kayanath and Holly on the team.
We offer a limited number of work experience placements each year, so if you are interested, please email kim.simpson@chawtonhouse.org.